________________________________________________
_ Still men were without faith in the strike. When Daylight,
with his heavy outfit of flour, arrived at the mouth of the
Klondike, he found the big flat as desolate and tenantless as
ever. Down close by the river, Chief Isaac and his Indians were
camped beside the frames on which they were drying salmon.
Several old-timers were also in camp there. Having finished
their summer work on Ten Mile Creek, they had come down the
Yukon, bound for Circle City. But at Sixty Mile they had learned
of the strike, and stopped off to look over the ground. They had
just returned to their boat when Daylight landed his flour, and
their report was pessimistic.
"Damned moose-pasture," quoth one, Long Jim Harney, pausing to
blow into his tin mug of tea. "Don't you have nothin' to do with
it, Daylight. It's a blamed rotten sell. They're just going
through the motions of a strike. Harper and Ladue's behind it,
and Carmack's the stool-pigeon. Whoever heard of mining a
moose-pasture half a mile between rim-rock and God alone knows
how far to bed-rock!"
Daylight nodded sympathetically, and considered for a space.
"Did you-all pan any?" he asked finally.
"Pan hell!" was the indignant answer. "Think I was born
yesterday! Only a chechaquo'd fool around that pasture long
enough to fill a pan of dirt. You don't catch me at any such
foolishness. One look was enough for me. We're pulling on in
the morning for Circle City. I ain't never had faith in this
Upper Country. Head-reaches of the Tanana is good enough for me
from now on, and mark my words, when the big strike comes, she'll
come down river. Johnny, here, staked a couple of miles below
Discovery, but he don't know no better." Johnny looked
shamefaced.
"I just did it for fun," he explained. "I'd give my chance in
the creek for a pound of Star plug."
"I'll go you," Daylight said promptly. "But don't you-all come
squealing if I take twenty or thirty thousand out of it."
Johnny grinned cheerfully.
"Gimme the tobacco," he said.
"Wish I'd staked alongside," Long Jim murmured plaintively.
"It ain't too late," Daylight replied.
"But it's a twenty-mile walk there and back."
"I'll stake it for you to-morrow when I go up," Daylight offered.
"Then you do the same as Johnny. Get the fees from Tim Logan.
He's tending bar in the Sourdough, and he'll lend it to me. Then
fill in your own name, transfer to me, and turn the papers over
to Tim."
"Me, too," chimed in the third old-timer.
And for three pounds of Star plug chewing tobacco, Daylight
bought outright three five-hundred-foot claims on Bonanza. He
could still stake another claim in his own name, the others being
merely transfers.
"Must say you're almighty brash with your chewin' tobacco," Long
Jim grinned. "Got a factory somewheres?"
"Nope, but I got a hunch," was the retort, "and I tell you-all
it's cheaper than dirt to ride her at the rate of three plugs for
three claims."
But an hour later, at his own camp, Joe Ladue strode in, fresh
from Bonanza Creek. At first, non-committal over Carmack's
strike, then, later, dubious, he finally offered Daylight a
hundred dollars for his share in the town site.
"Cash?" Daylight queried.
"Sure. There she is."
So saying, Ladue pulled out his gold-sack. Daylight hefted it
absent-mindedly, and, still absent-mindedly, untied the strings
and ran some of the gold-dust out on his palm. It showed darker
than any dust he had ever seen, with the exception of Carmack's.
He ran the gold back tied the mouth of the sack, and returned it
to Ladue.
"I guess you-all need it more'n I do," was Daylight's comment.
"Nope; got plenty more," the other assured him.
"Where that come from?"
Daylight was all innocence as he asked the question, and Ladue
received the question as stolidly as an Indian. Yet for a swift
instant they looked into each other's eyes, and in that instant
an intangible something seemed to flash out from all the body and
spirit of Joe Ladue. And it seemed to Daylight that he had
caught this flash, sensed a secret something in the knowledge and
plans behind the other's eyes.
"You-all know the creek better'n me," Daylight went on. "And if
my share in the town site's worth a hundred to you-all with what
you-all know, it's worth a hundred to me whether I know it or
not."
"I'll give you three hundred," Ladue offered desperately.
"Still the same reasoning. No matter what I don't know, it's
worth to me whatever you-all are willing to pay for it."
Then it was that Joe Ladue shamelessly gave over. He led
Daylight away from the camp and men and told him things in
confidence.
"She's sure there," he said in conclusion. "I didn't sluice it,
or cradle it. I panned it, all in that sack, yesterday, on the
rim-rock. I tell you, you can shake it out of the grassroots.
And what's on bed-rock down in the bottom of the creek they ain't
no way of tellin'. But she's big, I tell you, big. Keep it
quiet, and locate all you can. It's in spots, but I wouldn't be
none surprised if some of them claims yielded as high as fifty
thousand. The only trouble is that it's spotted."
* * *
A month passed by, and Bonanza Creek remained quiet. A
sprinkling of men had staked; but most of them, after staking,
had gone on down to Forty Mile and Circle City. The few that
possessed sufficient faith to remain were busy building log
cabins against the coming of winter. Carmack and his Indian
relatives were occupied in building a sluice box and getting a
head of water. The work was slow, for they had to saw their
lumber by hand from the standing forest. But farther down
Bonanza were four men who had drifted in from up river, Dan
McGilvary, Dave McKay, Dave Edwards, and Harry Waugh. They were
a quiet party, neither asking nor giving confidences, and they
herded by themselves. But Daylight, who had panned the spotted
rim of Carmack's claim and shaken coarse gold from the
grass-roots, and who had panned the rim at a hundred other places
up and down the length of the creek and found nothing, was
curious to know what lay on bed-rock. He had noted the four
quiet men sinking a shaft close by the stream, and he had heard
their whip-saw going as they made lumber for the sluice boxes.
He did not wait for an invitation, but he was present the first
day they sluiced. And at the end of five hours' shovelling for
one man, he saw them take out thirteen ounces and a half of gold.
It was coarse gold, running from pinheads to a twelve-dollar
nugget, and it had come from off bed-rock. The first fall snow
was flying that day, and the Arctic winter was closing down; but
Daylight had no eyes for the bleak-gray sadness of the dying,
short-lived summer. He saw his vision coming true, and on the
big flat was upreared anew his golden city of the snows. Gold
had been found on bed-rock. That was the big thing. Carmack's
strike was assured. Daylight staked a claim in his own name
adjoining the three he had purchased with his plug tobacco. This
gave him a block of property two thousand feet long and extending
in width from rim-rock to rim-rock.
Returning that night to his camp at the mouth of Klondike, he
found in it Kama, the Indian he had left at Dyea. Kama was
travelling by canoe, bringing in the last mail of the year. In
his possession was some two hundred dollars in gold-dust, which
Daylight immediately borrowed. In return, he arranged to stake a
claim for him, which he was to record when he passed through
Forty Mile. When Kama departed next morning, he carried a number
of letters for Daylight, addressed to all the old-timers down
river, in which they were urged to come up immediately and stake.
Also Kama carried letters of similar import, given him by the
other men on Bonanza.
"It will sure be the gosh-dangdest stampede that ever was,"
Daylight chuckled, as he tried to vision the excited populations
of Forty Mile and Circle City tumbling into poling-boats and
racing the hundreds of miles up the Yukon; for he knew that his
word would be unquestioningly accepted.
With the arrival of the first stampeders, Bonanza Creek woke up,
and thereupon began a long-distance race between unveracity and
truth, wherein, lie no matter how fast, men were continually
overtaken and passed by truth. When men who doubted Carmack's
report of two and a half to the pan, themselves panned two and a
half, they lied and said that they were getting an ounce. And
long ere the lie was fairly on its way, they were getting not one
ounce but five ounces. This they claimed was ten ounces; but
when they filled a pan of dirt to prove the lie, they washed out
twelve ounces. And so it went. They continued valiantly to lie,
but the truth continued to outrun them.
One day in December Daylight filled a pan from bed rock on his
own claim and carried it into his cabin. Here a fire burned and
enabled him to keep water unfrozen in a canvas tank. He squatted
over the tank and began to wash. Earth and gravel seemed to fill
the pan. As he imparted to it a circular movement, the lighter,
coarser particles washed out over the edge. At times he combed
the surface with his fingers, raking out handfuls of gravel. The
contents of the pan diminished. As it drew near to the bottom,
for the purpose of fleeting and tentative examination, he gave
the pan a sudden sloshing movement, emptying it of water. And
the whole bottom showed as if covered with butter. Thus the
yellow gold flashed up as the muddy water was flirted away. It
was gold--gold-dust, coarse gold, nuggets, large nuggets. He was
all alone. He set the pan down for a moment and thought long
thoughts. Then he finished the washing, and weighed the result
in his scales. At the rate of sixteen dollars to the ounce, the
pan had contained seven hundred and odd dollars. It was beyond
anything that even he had dreamed. His fondest anticipation's
had gone no farther than twenty or thirty thousand dollars to a
claim; but here were claims worth half a million each at the
least, even if they were spotted.
He did not go back to work in the shaft that day, nor the next,
nor the next. Instead, capped and mittened, a light stampeding
outfit, including his rabbit skin robe, strapped on his back, he
was out and away on a many-days' tramp over creeks and divides,
inspecting the whole neighboring territory. On each creek he was
entitled to locate one claim, but he was chary in thus
surrendering up his chances. On Hunker Creek only did he stake a
claim. Bonanza Creek he found staked from mouth to source, while
every little draw and pup and gulch that drained into it was
like-wise staked. Little faith was had in these side-streams.
They had been staked by the hundreds of men who had failed to get
in on Bonanza. The most popular of these creeks was Adams. The
one least fancied was Eldorado, which flowed into Bonanza, just
above Karmack's Discovery claim. Even Daylight disliked the
looks of Eldorado; but, still riding his hunch, he bought a half
share in one claim on it for half a sack of flour. A month later
he paid eight hundred dollars for the adjoining claim. Three
months later, enlarging this block of property, he paid forty
thousand for a third claim; and, though it was concealed in the
future, he was destined, not long after, to pay one hundred and
fifty thousand for a fourth claim on the creek that had been the
least liked of all the creeks.
In the meantime, and from the day he washed seven hundred dollars
from a single pan and squatted over it and thought a long
thought, he never again touched hand to pick and shovel. As he
said to Joe Ladue the night of that wonderful washing:-
"Joe, I ain't never going to work hard again. Here's where I
begin to use my brains. I'm going to farm gold. Gold will grow
gold if you-all have the savvee and can get hold of some for
seed. When I seen them seven hundred dollars in the bottom of
the pan, I knew I had the seed at last."
"Where are you going to plant it?" Joe Ladue had asked.
And Daylight, with a wave of his hand, definitely indicated the
whole landscape and the creeks that lay beyond the divides.
"There she is," he said, "and you-all just watch my smoke.
There's millions here for the man who can see them. And I seen
all them millions this afternoon when them seven hundred dollars
peeped up at me from the bottom of the pan and chirruped, 'Well,
if here ain't Burning Daylight come at last.'" _
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